Natural Light Emission via Quantized Anderson Localized States in 2D Amorphous Semiconductor Heterojunctions

ABSTRACT Nowadays, the full‐spectrum artificial lighting technology that approaches the solar spectrum has become an important issue in the field of lighting. Yet, to date, the development of full‐spectrum white‐light‐emitting diodes (WLEDs) remains hindered by the fixed band gaps of conventional semiconductors and the synthetic challenges of certain specific‐color phosphors, resulting in poor spectral tenability and far deviation from the solar spectrum. Herein, based on first‐principles calculations, we propose a new conceptual scheme to potentially achieve full‐spectrum white light emission via two‐dimensional (2D) amorphous heterojunction (a‐SiC/a‐MoS 2 ), which intrinsically emits broadband white light closely matching the D65 standard source. We further reveal that the underlying mechanism of full‐spectrum emission stems from two aspects: firstly, the quantum confinement effects in 2D amorphous heterojunctions lead to the formation of a series of discrete and strongly localized Anderson tail states in their bandgaps; secondly, the disordered structure breaks the orbital symmetry, which fully enables transitions of these states that maybe forbidden in crystalline counterparts. Thus, the combined effect of the two not only allows for sufficient transition energy levels, but also modulates the spectral distribution. Our work opens a new approach for full‐spectrum artificial lighting, with promising implications for the advancement of high‐quality lighting.